You remember that Betty had drawn the nurse’s slip, and how pleased she had been about it.  She got up early the morning of the first day and made herself a lawn cap and telephoned out for a white nurse’s uniform—­that is, of course, for a white uniform for a nurse.  She really looked very fetching, and she went around all the morning with a red cross on her sleeve and a Saint Cecilia expression, gathering up bottles of medicine—­most of it flesh reducer, which was pathetic, and closing windows for fear of drafts.  She refused to help with the house work, and looked quite exalted, but by afternoon it had palled on her somewhat, and she and Max shook dice.

Betty was really pleased when Aunt Selina sent for her.  She took in a bottle of cologne to bathe her brow, and we all stood outside the door and listened.  Betty tiptoed in in her pretty cap and apron, and we heard her cautiously draw down the shades.

“What are you doing that for?” Aunt Selina demanded.  “I like the light.”

“It’s bad for your poor eyes,” Betty’s tone was exactly the proper bedside pitch, low and sugary.

“Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea!” Dal hummed outside.

“Put up those window shades!” Aunt Selina’s voice was strong enough.  “What’s in that bottle?”

Betty was still mild.  She swished to the window and raised the shade.

“I’m so sorry you are ill,” she said sympathetically.  “This is for your poor aching head.  Now close your eyes and lie perfectly still, and I will cool your forehead.”

“There’s nothing the matter with my head,” Aunt Selina retorted.  “And I have not lost my faculties; I am not a child or a sick cow.  If that’s perfumery, take it out.”

We heard Betty coming to the door, but there was no time to get away.  She had dropped her mask for a minute and was biting her lip, but when she saw us she forced a smile.

“She’s ill, poor dear,” she said.  “If you people will go away, I can bring her around all right.  In two hours she will eat out of my hand.”

“Eat a piece out of your hand,” Max scoffed in a whisper.

We waited a little longer, but it was too painful.  Aunt Selina demanded a mustard foot bath and a hot lemonade and her back rubbed with liniment and some strong black tea.  And in the intervals she wanted to be read to out of the prayer book.  And when we had all gone away, there came the most terrible noise from Aunt Selina’s room, and every one ran.  We found Betty in the hall outside the door, crying, with her fingers in her ears and her cap over her eye.  She said she had been putting the hot water bottle to Aunt Selina’s back, and it had been too hot.  Just then something hit against the door with a soft thud, fell to the floor and burst, for a trickle of hot water came over the sill.

“She won’t let me hold her hand,” Betty wailed, “or bathe her brow, or smooth her pillow.  She thinks of nothing but her stomach or her back!  And when I try to make her bed look decent, she spits at me like a cat.  Everything I do is wrong.  She spilled the foot bath into her shoes, and blamed me for it.”